


blood and ash (but the world will hear us roar)

by Leaf-Groot (Tavina)



Series: the world will hear us roar [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, EXTREMELY divergent, Gen, POV Shikako, POV Tywin, Shikako is re-reborn as Tywin's sister, Tywin is (possibly) unhinged, like literally - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22109491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tavina/pseuds/Leaf-Groot
Summary: Jocelyn is born the elder of twins, a babe so quiet she wouldn't even cry.Shikako Nara is re-reborn and finds that her new world is just as bloody and unsettling as the last.Tywin seethes and seethes and seethes, and Westeros turns disjointedly on its head.The world was never ready for the birth of Lannister twins.
Relationships: Tywin Lannister & Nara Shikako, Tywin Lannister & OC
Series: the world will hear us roar [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604410
Comments: 13
Kudos: 492
Collections: Dreaming of Sunshine Exchange 2019 B, Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	blood and ash (but the world will hear us roar)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunesongs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunesongs/gifts).



They say, every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin and the whole world holds its breath. Madness or greatness? Let luck decide.

But this is not a story about Targaryens. Or at least, not in ways that hold much meaning.

They do not say much about the births of other people. Presumably the gods do not concern themselves much with that. But they should. Perhaps this time, they should.

In the year 242 AC, on the night of a great starfall, two children were born — Jocelyn, five minutes the elder, quiet and withdrawn, and Tywin, five minutes the younger, loud and angry.

This is what they do not say, about Lannisters, twins or otherwise: the roar of the lion will shake the world.

* * *

She is five years old when she sees herself in a mirror for the first time in this new life. It is a grainy image, the _looking glass,_ but after so long as _Shikako_ it’s a shock to find that she doesn’t have dark hair.

She doesn’t have dark eyes.

She lacks the features she’d grown to know so well.

Instead, a child of five peers back at her, with eyes a stunning shade of green, and a tumble of golden locks of hair, her wine red gown embroidered fancifully with little golden lions.

Gone is her shinobi attire, gone are her formerly toned muscles product of years of sweat and blood, gone was the chakra she’d learned to feel like a sixth sense, gone is everyone she’s learned to love, all of it is — gone.

This is the first time, that she realizes Jocelyn Lannister is not a name for some other person, but instead, _her._

Her name was Jocelyn.

She was the eldest child of Tytos Lannister.

And this strange new world still clung like an ill fitting skin even five years after the fact.

* * *

Tywin is five years old when the servants start to whisper that his twin sister was crazy, that she was mad, that she went around looking for things that weren’t there, spoke like a child twice her age or more, had wanted to learn how to fight like a _boy,_ that sometimes she sat staring straight ahead blankly for hours on end.

And he _burned,_ angry with it all.

It’d been a gentle summer, a gentle summer and a long one, and he’d watched the ships go by in Lannisport, had dragged Jocelyn with him to explore the Rock, had sat with her through just about every staring spell, knew exactly what to say to make her smile.

When the Master-at-Arms taught him how to hold a blade, he brings her a wooden practice sword, watches her eyes light up.

When they spar together in a hidden alcove dusty from disuse, a secret shared by just the two of them, not Kevan, not Genna, and certainly not little Tygett, she matches him blow for blow, equals in every sense of the word.

When they are taught together by the maester, Jocelyn matches him answer for answer, soaks in histories like a sponge while he masters the names of the great lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms, counts every sigil of hundreds on the back of his eyelids before he falls asleep at night.

This is how Tywin knows that his sister isn’t mad, or insane, or crazy.

She was Jocelyn, and he hadn’t known a world without her.

* * *

Jocelyn is ten years old when her lord father nearly promises her to Walder Frey’s second son.

Tywin snaps out a tense “ _What?_ ” from beside her at the feast table, and for another time, another life, Jocelyn finds herself slightly in the shadow of her twin brother.

No, Tywin is no Shikamaru, though she supposes they share some similarity. Where Shikamaru was intelligent, Tywin is shrewd, building connections and settling disputes with the self assurance that he was born to do so. Tywin was cunning and cruel and protective of his own and controlling in odd ways and not in others...and perhaps he and Shikamaru shared more than just being two sides of the same coin though they looked like night and day.

He is shaking in indignation, bursting with rage, as though he wished to leap across the table and claw Lord Walder Frey’s face off himself, and their lord father looks at the scene about to happen and laughingly declares “It was an off color jape perhaps.”

Further down the table, a frightened look crosses Genna’s face. It’s been a long time since Jocelyn had a sister, and she spares a thought of thanks to whatever gods there were that Lord Frey did not then turn his gaze towards Genna.

She doesn’t think Tywin would rip anyone’s face off for their little sister. She doesn’t know why she’s earned a place of distinction in his heart.

Thankfully, the conversation turns towards other topics.

Later, when they are alone, Tywin sitting on her bed with his shoulders hunched and his ankles crossed, scowl carving so deep into his face that she doubts he’s only a boy of ten, and her pacing the floor with smaller terse steps, trying not to trip over her cloth of gold gown.

“I won’t let him marry you off. Not to a second son of all things.” He spits his words from between grit absolute _fury_ in every word. “We’re Lannisters. Lions don’t bow to sheep.”

He must’ve seen the look on her face because he uncurls himself, comes to hold her hands, pausing her pacing for the moment. “You’re my _dearest_ sister.” And suddenly he is just ten after all. “You deserve the world.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “I don’t want to get married.” She says thickly. “Not to anyone.” There’s no word for it here, not like in either of her two previous worlds. There’s no word that says she does not love that way, never have and never will.

And Tywin, even with all his callous cruel edges and glittering green eyes sparking with so much _anger,_ was a product of this world.

Would he _understand?_

His eyes scan her face for a long long moment, pieces of a puzzle piecing itself together. “Then you won’t,” he says, even though she is certain he still has not understood. “Then you won’t,” he says again. “I’ll kill every man who dares try.”

Violence was casual to Tywin, in a way that it had never been with Shikamaru, but she’d not known this world before or without him, like the other side of a coin, so maybe he _is_ her favorite brother. Just like she’s his favorite sister.

* * *

Tywin is three and ten when he leaves for the capital, riding alongside Jocelyn’s carriage on a pony. She’ll be a lady-in-waiting for Princess Rhaella, and he’ll be a cupbearer for Prince Jaehaerys, good positions for unfostered children of the Lord of the Rock.

The Laughing Lion had wanted to keep them close. The Laughing Lion, however, laughed no longer.

He spares a cross thought for a moment of remembrance at the way they’d parted from their lord father.

Lord Tytos had been deep in his cups, mourning the loss of a wife.

And Tywin would have perhaps thought the mourning a little more _appropriate_ sans the whore who seemingly installed herself in Lord Tytos’s lap in short order after his mother’s death.

And he knows that Jocelyn had disapproved as well.

They neither of them had been all that close to their lady mother — his world and his heart included the Rock and Jocelyn and that was plenty big enough for him, and Jocelyn spun on whatever axis she chose to without rhyme or rhythm — but there is basic grace.

And basic grace said that his lord father was a laughing stock.

But that could’ve been discerned three years ago when he’d nearly betrothed Jocelyn to a second son upon a whim.

Upon a _stupid_ whim.

He’d never seen his sister look so lost for words. Had never seen her quite so _scared._

_I don’t want to get married._

_Not to anyone._

And he’d told her he’d kill anyone who tried.

When he was Lord of Casterly Rock, when he was the lion of the rock, he would protect her. Jocelyn wasn’t weak — no equal of his could ever be weak — but on the subject of marriage, on that, he would have to protect her.

* * *

Jocelyn is three and ten and King’s Landing smells like piss and shit, but her carriage makes its way up to the Red Keep, Tywin riding alongside, with some five and thirty of their lord father’s bannermen.

Before they’d left the Westerlands, Tywin had had a screaming row with their lord father, half of it slurred in ways that she best decides not to remember.

“We’re here, Joss.” Tywin pulls back the curtain, offers her his hand.

And together, they are presented to court — Heir Tywin Lannister, and his twin sister, Lady Jocelyn.

From the corner of her eye, she spots a boy of one and ten with silver hair staring. There was something she really didn’t fancy knowing about in his stare.

Behind her on her shoulder blades, she feels the weight of two hundred eyes, all staring

Before her on his tall and terrible throne, King Aegon V mutters a quiet “and your lord father sent you here so soon after he lost his wife too.”

Beside her, Tywin bristles, ready to speak, but she opens her mouth first, and says, rather placidly. “We are rather old to be fostered, Your Majesty. To keep us any longer would’ve been remiss.”

It sparks a storm of whispers, but from the corner of her eye, she spots Tywin’s brief smile.

She is introduced to Princess Rhaella a few, short hours later, parted for the first time in this strange new place from Tywin who had been escorted off to see Prince Aerys.

“You look very similar to your brother, my lady.” Princess Rhaella mentions, once they are, for the most part, alone.

“We’re twins.” They were not completely cast from the same mold, but for someone unfamiliar perhaps they looked enough alike that it didn’t matter that Tywin had a slightly crooked nose — she remembers almost fondly he claims it to have been because he’d been squashed in the womb — and that her eyes were a shade lighter than his — she had no explanation for that. “It would be strange if we did not.”

“Do you like him?”

There’s a pause, a beat as she tries to figure out _how_ exactly she felt about Tywin, about his seething rage that outbursts into wild temper, about how he sometimes treated her like spun glass and still asked for her opinion about everything, how he smiled when she answered before him, how he still sneaked wooden swords from the training yard to spar with her in forgotten alcoves, how he’d said that he would kill anyone who dare try.

“Your brother, I mean.” Princess Rhaella adds after a moment.

“I do.” She finally says. “He’s my favorite brother.”

The princess gapes at her at this. “I wish I liked my brother, but I am certain that he doesn’t like me.” Princess Rhaella and Prince Aerys had been married earlier that year, Jocelyn remembers. And as icy as river water she remembers that her own lord father might’ve betrothed her at age ten too, if Tywin had not been about to burst with fury.

“He was staring at you when you were presented in court earlier.” There’s something far away and sad in Princess Rhaella’s eyes. “I expect you’ll be in his bed soon enough.”

So that was Prince Aerys.

So that was Prince Aerys.

She rather hopes she never has to stay near him for any length of time.

Tywin comes back excited. Prince Aerys could be a useful connection. A future king was always a good friend to have.

It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him what Princess Rhaella had said of the matter, but not everything could be solved by Tywin’s rages, especially not here.

It’s on the tip of her tongue, but she swallows the words. For now, Tywin could keep his excitement, and his new friend.

* * *

By eight and ten, they’d returned to the Rock, Jocelyn still neither betrothed nor wed. He’d seen Prince Aerys staring at his sister when he thought no one was looking, and internally Tywin had seethed and seethed and seethed again that she wasn’t born a _man_ destined to make her own fate because despite the easy way she drifted seemingly both of and not of this realm, she was bound to such petty rules and a lion of the rock should _never_ be bound.

But in the icy sludge of the winter’s rain before someday when it would turn back to spring and summer, Stafford and two others were seized by Ellyne Tarbeck.

He rides south, routes Waldaren Tarbeck in battle and sacks his hall. Further south still, when Roger Reyne would not fight, choosing instead to hide in Castamere, he diverts a nearby stream and drowns them all.

When he returns, it is not to joy.

Jocelyn greets him in the front hall in a wine red gown with golden lions roaring on her shoulders. “You killed them all?”

“I did.”

“Why?” He doesn’t understand the look in her eyes, but then, since when has he ever understood Jocelyn?

“You saw how they shamed us.” They’d refused to pay their debts. They’d _laughed._ And since their lord father was, always had, and always _will_ do nothing, it had been up to him to do something.

So do something he had.

Now the rains could weep over Castamere all they’d like.

He’d ended the house, and ended the name and ended everything that would keep them laughing.

No more laughing.

“You killed the blameless and the innocent as well as the guilty.”

He weighs the words, considers them simply. So he had. “And they in turn would kill us if I let them live this time.” He’d spend his days waiting for a knife to the back when he could live perfectly free of the extra worry.

“You don’t know that.” There’s an edge of steel in Jocelyn’s voice. “They could’ve grown up being your loyal bannermen.”

“Why do the Reyne children matter at all to you?” _He_ was the one who was her brother, not the three children who’d died in the flooding.

She and the Rock were his whole world, and suddenly three dead children had made themselves important to her?

“I don’t understand why you did it.” She scowls, frown carved deep on her face. “I don’t understand why you would. You value logic so much, but what were their lives to you?”

“Nothing,” he says.

She recoils. “Nothing?”

It cuts a knife wound right into his heart.

“Nothing,” he says again. “Did they mean something to you, Joss?” If he’d known this maybe he’d have stood the irritated way he’d spend the next few years, waiting for a knife to the back from one of Roger Reyne’s sons.

Maybe he would’ve.

Maybe he wouldn’t.

But he never wants to see her frightened of _him_ ever again in his life.

“What am I to you then? Genna? Kevan? Gerion? What is anyone to you, Tywin?”

_Is that what this is to you? You think I would —_

“Family.” He takes her arms and doesn’t squeeze. “You’re my _sister._ I’d kill anyone who might harm you.”

The fear fades.

But it takes a long time after that before she smiles at something he says again.

It takes a long time.

But Jocelyn smiles again, and that is all that matters to him.

* * *

Two years later when Aerys takes the throne, he writes a letter to Tywin, who reads it at the breakfast table.

It crumples small in his sudden fist, his green eyes alight with a sudden rage. “You’re not for _sale._ ”

Wordlessly, Jocelyn holds out her hand for the letter.

Wordless still, Tywin passes it over.

* * *

They say, whenever a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin and the whole world holds its breath.

They say nothing about Lannister Twins.

But they should have.

When King Aerys II wrote, fancying himself a second wife, styling himself in the manner of Aegon the Conqueror, a young lion said no.

In the year 264 AC, the Targaryen dynasty came to an end, when Lannister forces swept King’s Landing.

They said nothing about Lannister Twins, but maybe now they will.

Those who didn’t know them well, would likely say something about ambition, about pride, about how the young lion’s roar shook the world.

But those who did might say, that two and twenty years ago, two children were born during a fall of stars, and that Tywin Lannister had never known a world without the quiet shadow of his elder sister.

Those who did, might say it was because a brother loved a sister too much to ask why even though he did not understand.

If anyone knew the Lannister Twins, they might say that.

**Author's Note:**

> So uh, I hope you like this! It's uh, well it's definitely sort of what I set out to write? but not exactly. There were just so many places where this could've ended up, but honestly, I'm pretty happy with where it did end up going.


End file.
